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Verizon Blocking 4chan
An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."
Oh yes, Verizon is sooo screwed, one of the largest ISPs in the world might get DDoSed by a hundred retarded people who will actually have the knowhow to DDoS, while thousands of others will wind up downloading trojans that spam 4chan.
~The roAm
Are they also going to block email, then? How about filefront and megaupload?
Because otherwise it's a hollow reason.
Not that any reason for censorship isn't hollow.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Free speech is only free if the speech you hate is free.
I find being offended by me offensive.
First they came for 4chan, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a 4chan member...
Imagine if you will, Verizon blocked Slashdot, and the internet was glad that all those FSF loving Unix-beard hippies would finally shut up about "This is the year of Linux on the desktop" rather than hoping for its return and condemning such censorship. Does that represent a portion of the populace? Sure. But if you loved going there you'd still be upset about not getting it back.
I love 4chan, I hate /b/, but 4chan as a whole is a unique collection of message boards with a much faster rate of posting than anything else on the internet, its almost part chatroom. The individual boards all have their own culture and sense of humor, and many of them are great sources of discussion and debate (sup /v/).
Please don't blindly judge 4chan based on /b/ and its stupid memes alone. People got tired of that whole "anonymous is legion" and "lolcat" shit a long time ago.
is it actually necessary, though, that the be a 'neutral data routing service'? Say I own a restaurant. Let's get fancy, call it a Food Routing Service. If I feel that it's immoral to serve veal, or dogmeat, or endangered animal flesh, or something possibly dangerous like pufferfish, then I can do that. People get to know me as the restaurant with that kind of menu and if someone needs something off my menu, they're welcome to go somewhere else to get it but I just wont serve it.. or is my analogy lacking something? Seems solid to me... There's got to be a hundred-thousand other web pages where a person can get images of -*ahem*, that sort, if it's really that important.
Your analogy works as long as people have a choice. In some areas, people only have one ISP available to them as a reasonable source of Internet access. If Verizon was someone's only choice, then they can't really go anywhere else. Or, to go along with your analogy, if you owned the only restaurant in town and there were no supermarkets, convenience stores, etc...
You are bound to get replies that basically amount to "What can Anonymous possibly do to freaking Verizon?!"
They have no idea what they've done. 4chan isn't your average bastion of internet malcontents. DDOS? Please. Kevin Mitnick could be called a precursor, and we know with the Scientology war, they're more than willing to hack meatspace. If 4chan as a group takes issue with this, everyone down to the CEO of Verizon will be essentially fair game for various levels of harassment. They'll have the address and private phone number of anyone who matters within days, and they, probably more than anyone, know how to abuse such information.
I really, really don't envy Verizon right now. This of course hinges on whether or not 4chan will actually care, and that's anybody's guess. It's not a good precedent, though.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
One has an army of juveniles the other has an army of congressmen. Which one do you think will win?
It depends on your definition of victory; however in most cases I would bet on juveniles - many are vicious and unrestrained by social norms, while politicians are just greedy and power-hungry.
To put it differently: who would you prefer to meet in a dark alley in a bad part of town - a group of juveniles or a group of congressmen?
A DDOS attack originating from port 80 of boards.4chan.org? Think again.
See, I'm not so sure about that. This is more akin to kicking a nest of fire ants. Generally—but not always—they'll leave you alone if you leave them alone, but deliberately provoking them is hardly recommended behavior.
4chan is absolutely not a den of terrorists. They're like a microcosm of society, reflecting all the dirty little things we don't like to acknowledge, but exist anyway. It's something most people would not like to confront in any manner, and certainly wouldn't want all those unrelated agendas focused upon them.
Let's get this straight: there is no unified 4chan. It's just a group of loosely associated contributors. But I guarantee if enough of them feel offended, retaliation will seem like a unified force; that's an illusion. 4chan isn't a terrorist organization. It's not even an organization. But humans trend toward common ground, and threatening that is an "at your own risk" proposition.
Like I said in my post, it's yet to be determined whether or not a critical mass of 4chan members will care enough about this to take action, but Verizon is playing Russian Roulette regardless of the outcome, or where any of this stand on the issue.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Look at what America has become since 9/11.
When I was a kid it was popular to point to various things in the USSR like the inability to travel freely without "showing your papers" as evidence of totalitarian oppression. Here in 2010 "showing your papers" is as American as apple pie! Fuck, kids can't even bring techie looking projects to school without triggering a terror scare and being in danger of prosecution under insane laws that make it a crime to do anything that some uneducated moron might confuse with a terrorist act.
They terrorists HAVE ALREADY WON, no doubt about it.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
How is that a troll?
You just learned the difference between throwing out an insult and presenting a well-formulated argument. Being convincing and polite is all about format. tone and attitude.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.